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Forums - Nintendo - will the wii u be able to upscale wii games?

Viper1 on 05 September 2012
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

If they want 100% B/C with everything as they are pushing, a lot of the hardare will need to be there.  And that could incude everything that limits Wii to 480p.


what do you mean with a lot of hardware? the cpu is still a ppc, just generations ahead. the gpu of gc/wii was built by ati/amd, so will the gpu of wiiU. so i don't really see nintendo will build in wii-hardware - this will also increase costs what we could see with the japanese ps3 at launch.

and also keep in mind that it is almost a tradition at nintendo to keep close to last generation in terms of hardware for bc.

Broadway (Wii GPU) is PowerPC .  The CPU in the Wii U is Power 7.

Hollywood (Wii GPU) was originally based on the ARTx designed GC Flipper GPU which utilized a TEV fixed function pipeline rather than AMD's unified shader architecture.

 

Because both the GPU and CPU are very different architecures, it requires them to have much of the Wii hardware built in to emulate the games and operate all the Wii peripherals with flawless operability.



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walsufnir on 05 September 2012
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

If they want 100% B/C with everything as they are pushing, a lot of the hardare will need to be there.  And that could incude everything that limits Wii to 480p.


what do you mean with a lot of hardware? the cpu is still a ppc, just generations ahead. the gpu of gc/wii was built by ati/amd, so will the gpu of wiiU. so i don't really see nintendo will build in wii-hardware - this will also increase costs what we could see with the japanese ps3 at launch.

and also keep in mind that it is almost a tradition at nintendo to keep close to last generation in terms of hardware for bc.

Broadway (Wii GPU) is PowerPC .  The CPU in the Wii U is Power 7.

Hollywood (Wii GPU) was originally based on the ARTx designed GC Flipper GPU which utilized a TEV fixed function pipeline rather than AMD's unified shader architecture.

 

Because both the GPU and CPU are very different architecures, it requires them to have much of the Wii hardware built in to emulate the games and operate all the Wii peripherals with flawless operability.


1. power7 is ppc according to wikipedia. the isa is compatible.vhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) look at the right boxes.

2. gpu could be more tricky, yes. but as details from wiiU by now are missing.

3. if the hardware is built-in then you can't really speak of emulation.



Crono141 on 05 September 2012

I still don't think the hardware is built in. I think there is some level of software emulation in either the CPU or the GPU. In any case, all we have here is speculation. We won't really know for sure until after the WiiU has been prodded by a hacker or enthusiast.



Check out my Youtube Let's Play channel here.

Red4ADevil on 05 September 2012

This may be a stupid question but if the Wii U can't upscale wii games due to hardware limitations, Then how is it that the first (I mean FIRST) generation PS3s (with the orginal B/C feature) were able to upscale PS2 games? Just curious.



Viper1 on 05 September 2012
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

Broadway (Wii GPU) is PowerPC .  The CPU in the Wii U is Power 7.

Hollywood (Wii GPU) was originally based on the ARTx designed GC Flipper GPU which utilized a TEV fixed function pipeline rather than AMD's unified shader architecture.

 

Because both the GPU and CPU are very different architecures, it requires them to have much of the Wii hardware built in to emulate the games and operate all the Wii peripherals with flawless operability.


1. power7 is ppc according to wikipedia. the isa is compatible.vhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) look at the right boxes.

2. gpu could be more tricky, yes. but as details from wiiU by now are missing.

3. if the hardware is built-in then you can't really speak of emulation.

1. No, it's not.   The box on the right has seperate sections for PowerPC and Power7.  Don't confuse PowerPC and Power7 with POWER architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Architecture



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Crono141 on 05 September 2012
Red4ADevil said:
This may be a stupid question but if the Wii U can't upscale wii games due to hardware limitations, Then how is it that the first (I mean FIRST) generation PS3s (with the orginal B/C feature) were able to upscale PS2 games? Just curious.

I think there is a difference in understanding of terminology here.  The WiiU will almost certainly "upscale" games, where they play at native rendering but the signal from the WiiU to the TV is in HD.  This is the same kind of upscaling the PS3 and PS2 did with its BC.  The video signal was HD, but the game was still rendered in its original resolution.

What we are talking about in this thread is whether the WiiU will Render old software at a higher resolution.  Turn a 480p game into a 720p game, eliminating jaggies in polygons and smoothing textures.  This the WiiU will almost certainly NOT do.  But it would be really awesome if it did.  I'd love to get visuals like I get on Dolphin on PC natively with the WiiU on Wii games.  They look gorgeous.



Check out my Youtube Let's Play channel here.

NintendoPie on 05 September 2012

No, I don't think Nintendo had ever done that before, either.



walsufnir on 05 September 2012
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

Broadway (Wii GPU) is PowerPC .  The CPU in the Wii U is Power 7.

Hollywood (Wii GPU) was originally based on the ARTx designed GC Flipper GPU which utilized a TEV fixed function pipeline rather than AMD's unified shader architecture.

 

Because both the GPU and CPU are very different architecures, it requires them to have much of the Wii hardware built in to emulate the games and operate all the Wii peripherals with flawless operability.


1. power7 is ppc according to wikipedia. the isa is compatible.vhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) look at the right boxes.

2. gpu could be more tricky, yes. but as details from wiiU by now are missing.

3. if the hardware is built-in then you can't really speak of emulation.

1. No, it's not.   The box on the right has seperate sections for PowerPC and Power7.  Don't confuse PowerPC and Power7 with POWER architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Architecture


so you say the power isa of power7 is not backwards compatible? aix from ibm has to be rewritten for every new power-generation? somehow i doubt that. intel changed a lot with their latest generation cpus, but you still can write code for 386 and execute it.



Red4ADevil on 05 September 2012
Crono141 said:
Red4ADevil said:
This may be a stupid question but if the Wii U can't upscale wii games due to hardware limitations, Then how is it that the first (I mean FIRST) generation PS3s (with the orginal B/C feature) were able to upscale PS2 games? Just curious.

I think there is a difference in understanding of terminology here.  The WiiU will almost certainly "upscale" games, where they play at native rendering but the signal from the WiiU to the TV is in HD.  This is the same kind of upscaling the PS3 and PS2 did with its BC.  The video signal was HD, but the game was still rendered in its original resolution.

What we are talking about in this thread is whether the WiiU will Render old software at a higher resolution.  Turn a 480p game into a 720p game, eliminating jaggies in polygons and smoothing textures.  This the WiiU will almost certainly NOT do.  But it would be really awesome if it did.  I'd love to get visuals like I get on Dolphin on PC natively with the WiiU on Wii games.  They look gorgeous.

Aaahhhhh yeah thats what I thought. Reading all the posts that weren't on the same page threw me off. Yeah, I now noticed. Some were saying it couldn't "render" the games themselves, while others were saying kinda broadly that it could without clarifying that it can picture wise. Thanks for clearing that up. It would be awsome though. I saw screen shots of SSBB rendered in actual 720 (by dolphin) it looked beautiful.



Viper1 on 05 September 2012
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

Broadway (Wii GPU) is PowerPC .  The CPU in the Wii U is Power 7.

Hollywood (Wii GPU) was originally based on the ARTx designed GC Flipper GPU which utilized a TEV fixed function pipeline rather than AMD's unified shader architecture.

 

Because both the GPU and CPU are very different architecures, it requires them to have much of the Wii hardware built in to emulate the games and operate all the Wii peripherals with flawless operability.


1. power7 is ppc according to wikipedia. the isa is compatible.vhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) look at the right boxes.

2. gpu could be more tricky, yes. but as details from wiiU by now are missing.

3. if the hardware is built-in then you can't really speak of emulation.

1. No, it's not.   The box on the right has seperate sections for PowerPC and Power7.  Don't confuse PowerPC and Power7 with POWER architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Architecture


so you say the power isa of power7 is not backwards compatible? aix from ibm has to be rewritten for every new power-generation? somehow i doubt that. intel changed a lot with their latest generation cpus, but you still can write code for 386 and execute it.

Yes, there is a lot of backwards compatibility with each new instruction set but the differnces between a PowerPC 750CE and a Power7 CPU means you can't just drop code from the former on the latter and expect it to run.



The rEVOLution is not being televised